America, as usual, is streets ahead of us in accepting props and costumes from Breaking Bad into its leading museum

Pop culture is a curious term. What are the alternatives? It’s a bit like those signs declaring the existence of “Accessible Toilets”. Are there really any other sort?

In culture, or anything else, popularity is the only true measure of value. Sure, great art is not always immediately accessible, but always becomes so. When you read a programme note that says “not performed since 1754” you know that it’s going to be mind-numbingly awful. As Joni Mitchell said, an art that speaks to only half a dozen people isn’t really art at all. It took an Anglophile American, TS Eliot, to recognise that culture includes both cabbages and cathedrals.